The Ancient Fiction
An apology against a selective reading
of history that aggrandizes particular nations over others.
You fools that
pick an choose from song
of Clio, once
spoken and spoken once again
for likes of
you! Why doth thy lie and ancient
fiction
perpetuate of thine worth? One would
think that the
cluster crowned by Britain did
hold sway over
world, and thine fitful skirmish
did write and
determine destiny across the seas!
But even
Britain, so proud and spread over
quarter of the
earth and sea, did not last more
than four
generations, to be given without
fight to its
first rebellious child. The kingdom
of Genghis Khan
laid rule firmer over swaths
of solid earth
than the outposts that meant
to India subdue
and with it ocean-sea.
Oxford and Harvard
stand as first temple
and refuge of
learning in thine mythology,
and men before
did not think or wonder.
But Maecenas
was early thirteen centuries
to raise and
patron Virgil to Roman glory,
and August
governed an Empire more united
than that which
scare, unwilling founded
these tiny
croppings in the array of world.
Be taught
instead and know that royal saint
discerned and
donated pious gift of Jagiellonian
learning that
shares the ancient heritage with
papal academies
and the libraries of Baghdad
whose wisdom
preserved of Greeks did dye
Euphrates for
half moon beneath Mongol pillage.
Truth faithful
to the muse doth dispel the
darkness of the
plebs, that lays as heavy chain
of humiliation
on heroic peoples forgotten,
links of pride
on those inflated by hubris.
My pen
purchases the freedom won already,
recalls
geniuses from oblivion, and raises
to equal rank
and brilliance all the peoples
the Lord has summoned
and knit by sea.
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